Printers such as inkjet printers which print on a variety of print media such as paper, vellum or film are well known. Some larger printers, sometimes known as large-format printers, as well as accepting print media in single sheet format, also accept print media fed from a roll of media held by a rollfeed apparatus. The rollfeed apparatus releasably holds both ends of a shaft on which a roll of media is mounted and may provide braking to the rotation of the shaft to improve the feeding of media into the printer. The more expensive of these printers often integrally include such rollfeed apparatus when the printer is sold. However for less expensive models of printer which are sold without an integral rollfeed apparatus, or in order to provide a greater choice of models to a customer, it is known to provide a removal rollfeed apparatus.
Commonly assigned application U.S. 08/658,346, filed Apr. 29, 1996, entitled REMOVABLE ROLLFEED APPARATUS AND METHOD by Lewis et al, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,815,186 discloses a unitary rollfeed apparatus that is pivotally mountable on the front of a free-standing printer. As can be seen in FIG. 1, this prior art rollfeed apparatus 1 comprises a substantial frame assembly having a number of strengthening and stiffening elements 2 and 3 in addition to means 4 and 5 for holding a roll of media. The whole of this large and unwieldy rollfeed apparatus must then be hung onto the front of the printer utilising mounting points 6 and 7 as described in the referenced application. Although the legs for the printer are not shown in FIG. 1, it should be noted that this prior art removable rollfeed apparatus can only be utilised with free-standing printers having legs and cannot be utilised with a desk-mountable printer.